Questions And Answers
by Mac-alicious
Summary: If anyone asks, they WERE NOT planning on making a coat out of somebody's mother. / / or, a reflection on the loaded, totally bias questions in their Remedial Goodness homework. / / Missing Scene. Fearsome Foursome friendship introspective. Ones Shot.


**A/N:** This is my next Descendants fic. While watching the movie, I got a little bit of a kick out of the questions Fairy Godmother had for them in Remedial Goodness, so this is a play on that. I guess this could qualify as a missing scene from the middle section of the movie, prior to administration of the love spell, but it's really just a fun little one shot that I wrote to have some fun with the friendship between the core four. Let me know what you think! Enjoy! R&R! Thanks! ~Mac

 **Disclaimer:** I don't own Descendants.

 **Questions And Answers**

As if the class itself wasn't a slap in the face, the questions they were presented with in Remedial Goodness certainly were. It was pretty underhanded for a class taught by the Mistress of Goodness, The Fairy Godmother herself. It was almost a little conniving when they thought about it. But conniving was for villains, right? Heroes didn't intentionally inflict harm on others, especially not on the less fortunate. Perhaps it was unintentional, because the children of villains couldn't possibly have feelings to be hurt. Whatever the justification, the questions in Remedial Goodness were loaded and they hit their mark every time.

The four piled into the boys' dorm after one particular session of having Goodness shoved down their throats, one seriously biased question after another. They dumped their stacks of homework for the evening on the table and each took a chair. Although she would rather ignore it in favor of any of her other _far more appealing_ classwork, Mal couldn't help put pull out the packet of questions from Remedial Goodness. She read through it silently for a moment while the others were already starting on other work.

Mal shook her head and let the paper fall flat on the table. "Do any of you notice how all the Remedial Goodness questions are geared entirely to our backstories?"

Evie nodded without looking up from what she was working on. "Yeah, like why does it always have to be an apple? Maybe I prefer peaches," her head picked up, she smiled and pointed into the air, "or _pears_."

"I might steal candy from a baby, but my first instinct is not to curse it," Mal pushed some of her hair out of her fact. "Snotty, teenage, second generation princesses on the other hand..."

"The princesses aren't so bad," Jay replied.

"Humph," Mal rolled her eyes and picked up her Remedial Goodness packet again. She scanned the page until she landed on a specific question. "Okay, Jay, number ten in our homework. You find a lost princess, do you, A, help her navigate safely out of the forest. B, ignore her, or, C, use your magic snake stick to hypnotize her into marrying you so you can take over her kingdom and steal her fortune?"

"It doesn't actually say that, does it?" Carlos's eyes widened as he shuffled through his papers. "It can't _actually_ say that."

"Of course it doesn't," Mal said, "but, number five does actually say: when meeting a friend's pet for the first time do you pet it, ignore it, or skin it to make a coat?"

"That's a stupid question," Carlos said.

"Exactly," Mal agreed.

"You couldn't make a coat out of _one_ pet, maybe a hat or a scarf, but for a coat, the pet would have to be a bear or something," Carlos continued, making Mal groan.

"It would definitely take more fur to be the fabric of an entire coat," Evie confirmed. "Unless you only wanted to line it, that might work."

Carlos nodded.

"I heard there was a princess that turned her mother into a bear," Jay added.

"Enough," Mal broke in and the other three went silent. "The last thing we need is someone to walk in and think we were planning how to make a coat out of somebody's mother."

"Sorry, Mal," Evie said.

"Yeah, sorry, Mal," the boys added.

There is quiet for a few minutes, before Mal said. "The answer was A by the way. You're supposed to pet domesticated animals. I guess they're supposed to be... _cute_."

" _Oh_ ," Evie and Jay drew out the word.

"Do I have to?" Carlos squeaked.

Mal wondered if the true point to these questions was lost on the others. Sure, the questions were ridiculous and, once her tip of picking the answer that sucked the fun out of a situation sunk in, easily skimmed through. They required very little brain power to sort out the answer; there was a reason the class was called _remedial_. But Mal saw them for what they really were.

They weren't just the easiest questions to get the whole point of goodness across, to show the dos and don'ts, or to draw the line between what and who were intrinsically good and evil. They accomplished that task, sure, but that wasn't the real purpose. They were deliberate reminders of who their parents were, what their parents had done, and where they had come from. Mal wasn't sure if it was meant to be a deterrent; like, look at what your parents did and where it got them in the end. Don't you want to be different? It was that, or possibly, it was supposed to be an affirmation that they knew exactly who Mal and her friends were at their cores and this was the way of saying, who they were was wrong. Or it was a technique used to root out just how rotten their upbringing had made them, so that they could catch them earlier and cart them back to the Isle before they did any harm to the innocent citizens of Auradon. Any of those motives were actually more wicked than Mal expected of these proponents of all things good.

It made her think and question things she never had before. If someone good—who was raised on light and love, and never experienced darkness or hate—could have these hidden bad parts of themselves, did that mean someone bad could have a little good in them too? And if everyone had good and bad within them, despite how they were raised, then didn't that discredit any argument that a person was destined to be one or the other because of previous circumstances. Didn't that mean that anyone was capable of change, of growth, of learning? Didn't it just depend on what parts of themselves they chose to act on? Couldn't then, the princess end up being the villain disguised perfectly by her cloak of ruffles and bows, hidden in plain sight? And if that was true, so was the reverse. The one everyone thought was evil could end up being the one to save the day. It was all so confusing and, honestly, Mal didn't know what to think about any of it.

When it came down to it, there might not have been any ill intent behind Remedial Goodness at all. Maybe they just thought Mal and the others were stupid.

Mal shook her head free of all those thoughts. She picked up the packet again and started to circle the correct situational responses for each question. Each one was more ridiculous than the last, but if they were stuck here longer, there was nothing she could do about it. She had to buckle down and grit her teeth through each absurd question. But she could only take so much before it got to her.

Mal laughed so loud when she flipped to the second page that everyone at the table looked up to stare at her. She waved her hand as she tried to control herself.

"Okay, I made up the answers to the lost princess question, but this one is one hundred percent in the assignment," Mal explained. She read from the sheet, "What is an appropriate method of getting a date with a prince or princess? A, Formal courting procedures after receiving permission from the subject of affectation's parent. B, Politely ask out him or her, possibly with an elaborate song and dance routine. C, Disguise yourself as his or her true love. Or, D, _hypnosis_."

Evie chuckled, "That one's for you, Jay."

Jay rolled his eyes. "And number seven is for you."

"It's not—" Evie set aside her other classwork to find the Remedial Goodness packet. "If you see someone prettier than you—Oh, you're an oaf."

"I'm not the one with a magic mirror,' Jay countered. Then he reached into one of his pockets and stared in mock wonder at what he found there, turning it over in his hands. "Oh, wait, maybe I am."

"Give that back," Evie leaned across the table to snatch it from him as he laughed.

"Hey guys," Carlos broke in. His brow furrowed as he looked at his packet. "Does your choice in animal companion actually have an influence on whether you're good or bad?"

"If you ask me," Mal said, " _No_. But I would pick the one that is so adorable it makes you want to vomit."

Carlos nodded, " _Chipmunk._ "

So maybe Mal could answer these Remedial Goodness questions in her sleep, even if she wasn't actually retaining any real knowledge from them, but there were still a lot of questions she had about herself, about the three people sitting beside her, about their parents, and about the world they lived in that she still didn't have the answers to. She wasn't sure if she ever would, but maybe someday.

-fin-


End file.
